Advanced image recognition for threat disposition scoring

ABSTRACT

Mechanisms are provided to implement an image based event classification engine having an event image encoder and a first neural network computer model. The event image encoder receives an event data structure comprising a plurality of event attributes, where the event data structure represents an event occurring in association with a computing resource. The event image encoder executes, for each event attribute, a corresponding event attribute encoder that encodes the event attribute as a pixel pattern in a predetermined grid of pixels, corresponding to the event attribute, of an event image. The event image is into to a neural network computer model which applies one or more image feature extraction operations and image feature analysis algorithms to the event image to generate a classification prediction classifying the event into one of a plurality of predefined classifications and outputs the classification prediction.

BACKGROUND

The present application relates generally to an improved data processingapparatus and method and more specifically to mechanisms for performingadvanced image recognition to identify and score threats to computingsystem resources.

Security intelligence event monitoring (SIEM) is an approach to securitymanagement that combines security information management with securityevent monitoring functions into a single security management system. ASIEM system aggregates data from various data sources in order toidentify deviations in the operation of the computing devices associatedwith these data sources from a normal operational state and then takeappropriate responsive actions to the identified deviations. SIEMsystems may utilize multiple collection agents that gather securityrelated events from computing devices, network equipment, firewalls,intrusion prevention systems, antivirus systems, and the like. Thecollection agents may then send this information, or a subset of thisinformation that has been pre-processed to identify only certain eventsfor forwarding, to a centralized management console where securityanalysts examine the collected event data and prioritize events as totheir security threats for appropriate responsive actions. Theresponsive actions may take many different forms, such as generatingalert notifications, inhibiting operation of particular computercomponents, or the like.

IBM® QRadar® Security Intelligence Platform, available fromInternational Business Machines (IBM) Corporation of Armonk, N.Y., is anexample of one SIEM system which is designed to detectwell-orchestrated, stealthy attacks as they are occurring andimmediately set off the alarms before any data is lost. By correlatingcurrent and historical security information, the IBM® QRadar® SecurityIntelligence Platform solution is able to identify indicators ofadvanced threats that would otherwise go unnoticed until it is too late.Events related to the same incident are automatically chained together,providing security teams with a single view into the broader threat.With QRadar®, security analysts can discover advanced attacks earlier inthe attack cycle, easily view all relevant events in one place, andquickly and accurately formulate a response plan to block advancedattackers before damage is done.

In many SIEM systems, the SIEM operations are implemented using SIEMrules that perform tests on computing system events, data flows, oroffenses, which are then correlated at a central management consolesystem. If all the conditions of a rule test are met, the rule generatesa response. This response typically results in an offense or incidentbeing declared and investigated.

Currently, SIEM rules are created, tested, and applied to a systemmanually and sourced from out of the box rules (base set of rules thatcome with a SIEM system), use case library rules (“template” rulesprovided by provider that are organized by category, e.g., NIST,Industry, etc.), custom rules (rules that are manually developed basedon individual requirements), and emerging thread rules (manuallygenerated rules derived from a “knee jerk” reaction to an emergingthread or an attack). All of these rules must be manually created,testing and constantly reviewed as part of a rule life-cycle. Thelife-cycle determines if the rule is still valid, still works, and stillapplies. Furthermore, the work involved in rule management does notscale across different customer SIEM systems due to differences incustomer industries, customer systems, log sources, and networktopology.

SIEM rules require constant tuning and upkeep as new systems comeonline, new software releases are deployed, and new vulnerabilities arediscovered. Moreover, security personnel can only create SIEM rules todetect threats that they already know about. SIEM rules are not a gooddefense against “Zero Day” threats and other threats unknown to thesecurity community at large.

SUMMARY

This Summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in asimplified form that are further described herein in the DetailedDescription. This Summary is not intended to identify key factors oressential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended tobe used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter.

In one illustrative embodiment, a method is provided, in a dataprocessing system comprising at least one processor and at least onememory, wherein the at least one memory comprises instructions which areexecuted by the at least one processor and specifically configure the atleast one processor to implement an image based event classificationengine comprising an event image encoder and a first neural networkcomputer model. The method comprises receiving, by the event imageencoder, an event data structure comprising a plurality of eventattributes. The event data structure represents an event occurring inassociation with at least one computing resource in a monitoredcomputing environment. The method further comprises executing, by theevent image encoder, for each event attribute in the plurality of eventattributes, a corresponding event attribute encoder that encodes theevent attribute as a pixel pattern in a predetermined grid of pixels,corresponding to the event attribute, of an event image representationdata structure. In addition, the method comprises inputting, into thefirst neural network computer model, the event image representation datastructure, and processing, by the first neural network computer model,the event image representation data structure by applying one or moreimage feature extraction operations and image feature analysisalgorithms to the event image representation data structure to generatea classification prediction output classifying the event into one of aplurality of predefined classifications. Moreover, the method comprisesoutputting, by the first neural network computer model, a classificationoutput indicating a prediction of one of the predefined classificationsthat applies to the event.

In other illustrative embodiments, a computer program product comprisinga computer useable or readable medium having a computer readable programis provided. The computer readable program, when executed on a computingdevice, causes the computing device to perform various ones of, andcombinations of, the operations outlined above with regard to the methodillustrative embodiment.

In yet another illustrative embodiment, a system/apparatus is provided.The system/apparatus may comprise one or more processors and a memorycoupled to the one or more processors. The memory may compriseinstructions which, when executed by the one or more processors, causethe one or more processors to perform various ones of, and combinationsof, the operations outlined above with regard to the method illustrativeembodiment.

These and other features and advantages of the present invention will bedescribed in, or will become apparent to those of ordinary skill in theart in view of, the following detailed description of the exampleembodiments of the present invention.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The invention, as well as a preferred mode of use and further objectivesand advantages thereof, will best be understood by reference to thefollowing detailed description of illustrative embodiments when read inconjunction with the accompanying drawings, wherein:

FIG. 1A is an example diagram illustrating the primary operationalelements for a training phase of an advanced image recognition forthreat disposition scoring (AIRTDS) computing system, and a workflow ofthese primary operational elements, in accordance with one illustrativeembodiment;

FIG. 1B is an example diagram illustrating the primary operationalelements for runtime operation of an AIRTDS computing system, aftertraining of the AIRTDS computing system, and a workflow of these primaryoperational elements, in accordance with one illustrative embodiment;

FIG. 2A is an example diagram illustrating a data layout of extractedsecurity alert attributes for a security alert that may be generated bythe IBM® QRadar® Security Intelligence Platform in accordance with oneillustrative embodiment;

FIG. 2B is an example diagram illustrating the image encoding of theindustry identifier/event vendor in accordance with one illustrativeembodiment;

FIG. 2C is an example diagram illustrating one example of this event andrule fire count attribute image encoding in accordance with oneillustrative embodiment;

FIG. 3A is a block diagram illustrating the operation of the alertattribute image encoding operation according to one illustrativeembodiment;

FIG. 3B is an example diagram illustrating an encoding of an alertgenerated by the IBM® QRadar® Security Intelligence Platform as an alertimage representation in accordance with one illustrative embodiment;

FIG. 4 is an example diagram of a convolutional neural network modelthat may be implemented as the predictive model of the AIRTDS system inaccordance with one illustrative embodiment;

FIG. 5A is a flowchart outlining an example operation of an AIRTDSsystem during a training of the predictive model in accordance with oneillustrative embodiment;

FIG. 5B is a flowchart outlining an example operation of a AIRTDS systemduring runtime operation in accordance with one illustrative embodiment;

FIG. 6 is an example diagram of a distributed data processing system inwhich aspects of the illustrative embodiments may be implemented; and

FIG. 7 is an example block diagram of a computing device in whichaspects of the illustrative embodiments may be implemented.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Mechanisms are provided that process alerts (or offenses), such as thosethat may be generated by a security intelligence event monitoring (SIEM)system and/or stored in constituent endpoint logs, and encode them intoan image that is then processed by a trained image recognition system toclassify the alerts (or offenses) as to whether or not they are truethreats or false positives. In performing the transformation of alertsinto an image, the mechanisms of the illustrative embodiments utilizeone or more transformation algorithms to transform or encode one or moreof the alert attributes into corresponding portions of an image at aspecified location and with image features, that correspond to thecontent of the alert attribute. Different alert attributes may betransformed or encoded into different sections of the image, with thetransformation or encoding specifically designed to generate a humanvisible pattern which is recognizable by the human eye as a visualpattern, but may not necessarily be human understandable as to what thepattern itself represents. In other words, the image recognition systemis able to understand the meaning behind the encoded image correspondingto the alert, while the human user may recognize the visual pattern asbeing a pattern, but not know the meaning of the pattern in the way thatthe image recognition system is able to understand the meaning.

It should be appreciated that while the primary illustrative embodimentsdescribed herein will make reference specifically to SIEM systems andSIEM alerts or offenses, the illustrative embodiments are not limited tosuch. Rather, the mechanisms of the illustrative embodiments may beimplemented with any computer data analytics systems which generateevents or log occurrences of situations for which classification of theevents or logged entries may be performed to evaluate the veracity ofthe event or logged entry. For ease of explanation of the illustrativeembodiments, and to illustrate the applicability of the presentinvention to security data analytics, the description of theillustrative embodiments set forth herein will assume a SIEM systembased implementation, but again should not be construed as being limitedto such.

As noted previously, data analytics systems, such as a securityintelligence event monitoring (SIEM) computing system operates based ona set of SIEM rules which tend to be static in nature. That is, the SIEMrules employed by a SIEM computing system to identify potential threatsto computing resources and then generate alerts/log entries are oftengenerated manually and in response to known threats, rather thanautomatically and in a proactive manner. As a result, such dataanalytics systems struggle to keep up with the ever-changing securitylandscape. That is, as these systems are primarily rule driven, securityexperts constantly have to modify and manage the SIEM rules in order tokeep up with new threats.

Often the SIEM computing systems suffer from a vast number offalse-positive alerts they generate, causing a large amount of manualeffort for security analysts and experts to investigate thesefalse-positive alerts to determine whether they are actual threatsrequiring the creation or modification of SIEM rules. Thus, it would bebeneficial to reduce the false-positives and identify true positives,i.e. true threats to computing resources, for further investigation. Inso doing, the amount of manual effort needed to investigate alerts andgenerate appropriate responses to actual threats, e.g., new or modifiedSIEM rules, may be reduced.

The illustrative embodiments provide an improved computing tool todifferentiate false-positive alerts from true threat alerts for furtherinvestigation by subject matter experts, e.g., security analysts andexperts, and remediation of such threats. The improved computing tool ofthe illustrative embodiments includes a trained neural network modelthat translates attributes of alerts into images and then uses a trainedimage classification neural network model to classify the alert imageinto a corresponding class, e.g., false-positive alert image, truethreat alert image, or indeterminate threat image. The mechanisms of theillustrative embodiments provide an analytics machine learning computingsystem that auto-disposes alerts based on learning prior securityanalyst/expert decisions and applying them to the alert images generatedby the mechanisms of the illustrative embodiments. The mechanisms of theillustrative embodiments utilize unsupervised machine learning withsimilarly encoded images to detect anomalies within alert images,further augmenting computing system capabilities to automaticallydisposition true threats.

In addition, the mechanisms of the illustrative embodiments may be useddirectly in an end user's computing environment in order to obfuscatesensitive data and securely send it over the network directly into thealert image classification computing tool of the illustrativeembodiments for auto-dispositioning. That is, at the end user'scomputing environment, alerts and logged entries may be translated intoan image representation of the alert or logged entry, referred to hereinas an alert image. The alert image may then be transmitted to a remotelylocated alert image classification computing tool of the illustrativeembodiments, thereby ensuring that only the alert image data is exposedoutside the end user's computing environment. Hence, an unauthorizedinterloper will at most be able to access the encoded alert image data,but without knowing the manner by which the encoded alert image data isencoded from the original alert or logged entries, will be unable toascertain the private or sensitive data from which the encoded alertimage data was generated. Additional security mechanisms, such asprivate-public key mechanisms, random seed values, and the like, may beused to increase the security of the alert image generation process anddecrease the likelihood that an interloper will be able to extract thesensitive underlying alert/log data that is the basis of the alert imagedata transmitted to the alert image classification computing tool of theillustrative embodiments.

In one illustrative embodiment, the advanced image recognition forthreat disposition scoring (AIRTDS) computing tool comprises two primarycognitive computing system elements which may comprise artificialintelligence based mechanisms for processing threat alerts/logged datato identify and differentiate true threat based alerts/log entries fromfalse-positive threat alerts/log entries. A first primary cognitivecomputing system element comprises an alert/log entry image encodingmechanism (referred to hereafter as an alert image encoder). The alertimage encoder comprises one or more algorithms for encoding alert/logentry attributes into corresponding pixels of a digital imagerepresentation of the alert/log entry having properties, e.g., pixellocation within the digital image representation, color of pixels, etc.,that are set to correspond to the encoded alert/log entry attribute. Thealert/log attributes that are encoded may comprise various types ofalert/log attributes extracted from the alert/log entry, such as remedycustomer ID, source Internet Protocol (IP) address, destination IP,event name, SIEM rule triggering alert/log entry, attack duration, andthe like. Different encoding algorithms may be applied to each type ofalert/log entry attribute and each encoding algorithm may target apredefined section of the image representation where the correspondingalert/log entry attribute is encoded.

While each encoding algorithm may encode the corresponding alert/logentry attribute in a different section of the image representation, theencoding algorithm is configured such that the combination of sectionsof the image representation are encoded in manner where a visual patternthat is present across the sections is generated. Thus, the algorithmsare specifically configured to work together to generate a visualpattern, i.e. a repeatable set of pixel properties and locations withina section, that spans across the plurality of sections of the imagerepresentation. The visual pattern is visually discernable by the humaneye even if the underlying meaning of the visual pattern is not humanrecognizable from the visual nature, e.g., the human viewing the imagerepresentation of the alert can see that there is a pattern, but cannotascertain that the particular pattern, to a cognitive computing systemof the illustrative embodiments, represents a true threat to a computingresource.

A second primary cognitive computing system element comprises analert/log entry classification machine learning mechanism thatclassifies alerts/log entries as to whether they represent true threats,false-positives, or indeterminate alerts/log entries. The alert/logentry classification machine learning mechanism may comprise a neuralnetwork model, e.g., a convolutional neural network (CNN), that istrained to classify images into one of a plurality of pre-definedclasses of images based on image analysis algorithms applied by thenodes of the neural network model to extract and process features of theinput image based on learned functions of the extracted features. In oneillustrative embodiment, the pre-defined classes of images comprisesclassifying an encoded image representation of an alert/log entry intoeither a true-threat classification or a false-positive classification(not a true threat). In this implementation, the neural network modelonly processes alerts/log entries that correspond to potential threatsto computing resources identified by a monitoring tool, such as SIEMsystem. In some implementations, additional classifications may also beutilized, e.g., indeterminate threat classification where it cannot bedetermined whether the alert/log entry corresponds to one of the otherpredetermined classes, non-threat classification in embodiments whereall log entries over a predetermined period of time are processed togenerate image representations which are then evaluated as to whetherthey represent a threat or a non-threat, etc. For purposes ofillustration, it will be assumed that an embodiment is implemented wherethe predetermined classifications consist of a true-threatclassification and a false-positive classification.

Assuming a SIEM computing system based implementation of theillustrative embodiments, during a training phase of operation, themechanisms of the AIRTDS computing tool process a set of alerts(offenses) generated by the SIEM computing system which are thendispositioned by a human security analyst/expert with a label of “truethreat” or “false positive.” That is, a human security analyst/expert isemployed to generate a set of training data comprising alerts that arelabeled by the human security analyst/expert as to whether they are truethreats or false positives. Each alert is encoded as an imagerepresentation by extracting the alert attributes from the alert thatare to be encoded, and then applying corresponding encoding algorithmsto encode those extracted alert attributes into sections of the imagerepresentation. For example, in one illustrative embodiment, the imagerepresentation of an alert/log entry is a 90×90 pixel image made up ofsmaller 90×5 pixel grids, each smaller grid representing an area forencoding individual alert attributes, or encoding of combinations of aplurality, or subset, of alert attributes.

For example, using an example of an IBM® QRadar® Security IntelligencePlatform as a SIEM system implementation, the mechanisms of theillustrative embodiments may extract a remedy customer ID (e.g., remedycustomer ID: JPID001059) from an alert generated by the SIEM system andencode the remedy customer ID by converting a predetermined set of bitsof the remedy customer ID, e.g., the last 6 digits of the remedycustomer ID (e.g., 001059, treating the digits as a 24 bit value), tocorresponding red, green, blue (RGB) color properties of a set of one ormore pixels in a section of the image representation of the alert. Thewhole customer ID may be used to set pixel locations for thecorresponding colored pixels by applying a bit mask to each character'sASCII value to determine whether or not to place a colored pixel, havingthe RGB color corresponding to the predetermined set of bits of theremedy customer ID, at a corresponding location.

Other encoding of other alert attributes may be performed to generate,for each section of the image representation, a corresponding sub-imagepattern which together with the other sub-image patterns of the varioussections of the image representation, results in a visual image patternpresent across the various sections. Examples of various types ofencoding algorithms that may be employed to encode alert attributes asportions of an image representation of the alert/log entry will beprovided in more detail hereafter. A combination of a plurality of thesedifferent encoding algorithms for encoding alert attributes may beutilized, and even other encoding algorithms that may become apparent tothose of ordinary skill in the art in view of the present descriptionmay be employed, depending on the desired implementation. The result isan encoded image representation of the original alert generated by theSIEM computing system which can then be processed using imagerecognition processing mechanisms of a cognitive computing system, suchas an alert/log entry classification machine learning computing system.

That is, in accordance with the illustrative embodiments, the encodedimage representation is then input to the alert/log entry classificationmachine learning mechanism which processes the image to classify theimage as to whether the alert/log entry classification machine learningmechanism determines the image represents a true threat or is a falsepositive. In some illustrative embodiments, the alert/log entryclassification machine learning mechanism comprises a convolutionalneural network (CNN) that comprises an image pre-processing layer toperform image transformation operations, e.g., resizing, rescaling,shearing, zoom, flipping pixels, etc., a feature detection layer thatdetects and extracts a set of features (e.g., the layer may comprise 32nodes that act as feature detectors to detect 32 different features)from the pre-processed image, and a pooling layer which pools theoutputs of the previous layer into a smaller set of features, e.g., amax-pooling layer that uses the maximum value from each of a cluster ofneurons or nodes at the prior layer (feature extraction layer in thiscase). The CNN may further comprise a flattening layer that converts theresultant arrays generated by the pooling layer into a single longcontinuous linear vector, fully connected dense hidden layers whichlearn non-linear functions of combinations of the extracted features(now flattened into a vector representation by the flattening layer),and an output layer which, in some illustrative embodiments, may be asingle neuron or node layer that outputs a binary output indicatingwhether or not the input image representation is representative of atrue threat or a false positive.

In some illustrative embodiments, the neurons or nodes may utilize arectified linear unit (Relu) activation function, while in otherillustrative embodiments, other types of activation functions may beutilized, e.g., softmax, radial bias functions, various sigmoidactivation functions, and the like. Moreover, while a CNN implementationhaving a particular configuration as outlined above is used in theillustrative embodiments described herein, other configurations ofmachine learning or deep learning neural networks may also be usedwithout departing from the spirit and scope of the illustrativeembodiments.

Through a machine learning process, such as an unsupervised machinelearning process, the alert/log entry classification machine learningmechanism is trained based on the human security analyst/expert providedlabels for the corresponding alerts, to recognize true threats and falsepositives. For example, the machine learning process modifiesoperational parameters, e.g., weights and the like, of the nodes of theneural network model employed by the alert/log entry classificationmachine learning mechanism so as to minimize a loss function associatedwith the neural network model, e.g., a binary cross-entropy lossfunction, or the like. Once trained based on the training data setcomprising the alert image representations and corresponding humananalyst/expert label annotations as to whether the alert is a “truethreat” (anomaly detected) or “false positive” (anomaly not detected),the trained alert/log entry classification machine learning mechanismmay be applied to new alert image representations to classify the newalert image representations as to whether they represent true threats orfalse positives.

As mentioned previously, in accordance with some illustrativeembodiments, one significant benefit obtained by the mechanisms of thepresent invention is the ability to maintain the security of an enduser's private or sensitive data, e.g., SIEM event data, within the enduser's own computing environment. That is, in some illustrativeembodiments, the alert image encoder may be deployed within the enduser's own computing environment so that the encoding of alerts as alertimage representations may be performed within the end user's owncomputing environment with only the alert image representation beingexported outside the end user's computing environment for processing bythe alert/log entry classification machine learning mechanisms of theillustrative embodiments. Thus, the end user's sensitive or private datadoes not leave the end user's secure computing environment and thirdparties are not able to discern the sensitive or private data withouthaving an intimate knowledge of the encoding algorithms specificallyused. It should further be appreciated that other security mechanisms,such as encryption, random or pseudo-random seed values used in theencrypting algorithms, and the like, may be used to add additionalvariability and security to the encryption algorithms and to thegenerated alert image representation to make it less likely that a thirdparty will be able to reverse engineer the alert image representation togenerate the sensitive or private data.

Thus, the illustrative embodiments provide mechanisms for convertingalerts/log entries into an image representation of the alerts/logentries for processing by cognitive image recognition mechanisms thatuse machine learning to recognize alert/log entry image representationsthat represent true threats or false positives. By converting thealerts/log entries into image representations and using machine learningto classify the alerts/log image representations, the evaluation of thealerts/log entries are not dependent on strict alphanumeric textcomparisons which may be apt to either miss actual threats or beover-inclusive of alerts/log entries that do not represent actualthreats. Moreover, because the mechanism of the illustrative embodimentsutilize image recognition based on image patterns, the mechanisms of theillustrative embodiments are adaptable to new alerts/log entriesattribute combinations that result is such patterns, without having towait for human intervention to generate new rules to recognize newthreats.

Before discussing the various aspects of the illustrative embodimentsfurther, it should first be appreciated that throughout this descriptionthe term “mechanism” will be used to refer to elements of the presentinvention that perform various operations, functions, and the like. A“mechanism,” as the term is used herein, may be an implementation of thefunctions or aspects of the illustrative embodiments in the form of anapparatus, a procedure, or a computer program product. In the case of aprocedure, the procedure is implemented by one or more devices,apparatus, computers, data processing systems, or the like. In the caseof a computer program product, the logic represented by computer code orinstructions embodied in or on the computer program product is executedby one or more hardware devices in order to implement the functionalityor perform the operations associated with the specific “mechanism.”Thus, the mechanisms described herein may be implemented as specializedhardware, software executing on general purpose hardware, softwareinstructions stored on a medium such that the instructions are readilyexecutable by specialized or general purpose hardware, a procedure ormethod for executing the functions, or a combination of any of theabove.

The present description and claims may make use of the terms “a”, “atleast one of”, and “one or more of” with regard to particular featuresand elements of the illustrative embodiments. It should be appreciatedthat these terms and phrases are intended to state that there is atleast one of the particular feature or element present in the particularillustrative embodiment, but that more than one can also be present.That is, these terms/phrases are not intended to limit the descriptionor claims to a single feature/element being present or require that aplurality of such features/elements be present. To the contrary, theseterms/phrases only require at least a single feature/element with thepossibility of a plurality of such features/elements being within thescope of the description and claims.

Moreover, it should be appreciated that the use of the term “engine,” ifused herein with regard to describing embodiments and features of theinvention, is not intended to be limiting of any particularimplementation for accomplishing and/or performing the actions, steps,processes, etc., attributable to and/or performed by the engine. Anengine may be, but is not limited to, software, hardware and/or firmwareor any combination thereof that performs the specified functionsincluding, but not limited to, any use of a general and/or specializedprocessor in combination with appropriate software loaded or stored in amachine readable memory and executed by the processor. Further, any nameassociated with a particular engine is, unless otherwise specified, forpurposes of convenience of reference and not intended to be limiting toa specific implementation. Additionally, any functionality attributed toan engine may be equally performed by multiple engines, incorporatedinto and/or combined with the functionality of another engine of thesame or different type, or distributed across one or more engines ofvarious configurations.

In addition, it should be appreciated that the following descriptionuses a plurality of various examples for various elements of theillustrative embodiments to further illustrate example implementationsof the illustrative embodiments and to aid in the understanding of themechanisms of the illustrative embodiments. These examples intended tobe non-limiting and are not exhaustive of the various possibilities forimplementing the mechanisms of the illustrative embodiments. It will beapparent to those of ordinary skill in the art in view of the presentdescription that there are many other alternative implementations forthese various elements that may be utilized in addition to, or inreplacement of, the examples provided herein without departing from thespirit and scope of the present invention.

The present invention may be a system, a method, and/or a computerprogram product. The computer program product may include a computerreadable storage medium (or media) having computer readable programinstructions thereon for causing a processor to carry out aspects of thepresent invention.

The computer readable storage medium can be a tangible device that canretain and store instructions for use by an instruction executiondevice. The computer readable storage medium may be, for example, but isnot limited to, an electronic storage device, a magnetic storage device,an optical storage device, an electromagnetic storage device, asemiconductor storage device, or any suitable combination of theforegoing. A non-exhaustive list of more specific examples of thecomputer readable storage medium includes the following: a portablecomputer diskette, a hard disk, a random access memory (RAM), aread-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROMor Flash memory), a static random access memory (SRAM), a portablecompact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), a digital versatile disk (DVD),a memory stick, a floppy disk, a mechanically encoded device such aspunch-cards or raised structures in a groove having instructionsrecorded thereon, and any suitable combination of the foregoing. Acomputer readable storage medium, as used herein, is not to be construedas being transitory signals per se, such as radio waves or other freelypropagating electromagnetic waves, electromagnetic waves propagatingthrough a waveguide or other transmission media (e.g., light pulsespassing through a fiber-optic cable), or electrical signals transmittedthrough a wire.

Computer readable program instructions described herein can bedownloaded to respective computing/processing devices from a computerreadable storage medium or to an external computer or external storagedevice via a network, for example, the Internet, a local area network, awide area network and/or a wireless network. The network may comprisecopper transmission cables, optical transmission fibers, wirelesstransmission, routers, firewalls, switches, gateway computers and/oredge servers. A network adapter card or network interface in eachcomputing/processing device receives computer readable programinstructions from the network and forwards the computer readable programinstructions for storage in a computer readable storage medium withinthe respective computing/processing device.

Computer readable program instructions for carrying out operations ofthe present invention may be assembler instructions,instruction-set-architecture (ISA) instructions, machine instructions,machine dependent instructions, microcode, firmware instructions,state-setting data, or either source code or object code written in anycombination of one or more programming languages, including an objectoriented programming language such as Java, Smalltalk, C++ or the like,and conventional procedural programming languages, such as the “C”programming language or similar programming languages. The computerreadable program instructions may execute entirely on the user'scomputer, partly on the user's computer, as a stand-alone softwarepackage, partly on the user's computer and partly on a remote computeror entirely on the remote computer or server. In the latter scenario,the remote computer may be connected to the user's computer through anytype of network, including a local area network (LAN) or a wide areanetwork (WAN), or the connection may be made to an external computer(for example, through the Internet using an Internet Service Provider).In some embodiments, electronic circuitry including, for example,programmable logic circuitry, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA), orprogrammable logic arrays (PLA) may execute the computer readableprogram instructions by utilizing state information of the computerreadable program instructions to personalize the electronic circuitry,in order to perform aspects of the present invention.

Aspects of the present invention are described herein with reference toflowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams of methods, apparatus(systems), and computer program products according to embodiments of theinvention. It will be understood that each block of the flowchartillustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations of blocks in theflowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, can be implemented bycomputer readable program instructions.

These computer readable program instructions may be provided to aprocessor of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, orother programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine, suchthat the instructions, which execute via the processor of the computeror other programmable data processing apparatus, create means forimplementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or blockdiagram block or blocks. These computer readable program instructionsmay also be stored in a computer readable storage medium that can directa computer, a programmable data processing apparatus, and/or otherdevices to function in a particular manner, such that the computerreadable storage medium having instructions stored therein comprises anarticle of manufacture including instructions which implement aspects ofthe function/act specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram blockor blocks.

The computer readable program instructions may also be loaded onto acomputer, other programmable data processing apparatus, or other deviceto cause a series of operational steps to be performed on the computer,other programmable apparatus or other device to produce a computerimplemented process, such that the instructions which execute on thecomputer, other programmable apparatus, or other device implement thefunctions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block orblocks.

The flowchart and block diagrams in the Figures illustrate thearchitecture, functionality, and operation of possible implementationsof systems, methods, and computer program products according to variousembodiments of the present invention. In this regard, each block in theflowchart or block diagrams may represent a module, segment, or portionof instructions, which comprises one or more executable instructions forimplementing the specified logical function(s). In some alternativeimplementations, the functions noted in the block may occur out of theorder noted in the figures. For example, two blocks shown in successionmay, in fact, be executed substantially concurrently, or the blocks maysometimes be executed in the reverse order, depending upon thefunctionality involved. It will also be noted that each block of theblock diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, and combinations of blocksin the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, can be implementedby special purpose hardware-based systems that perform the specifiedfunctions or acts or carry out combinations of special purpose hardwareand computer instructions.

FIG. 1A is an example diagram illustrating the primary operationalelements for a training phase of an advanced image recognition forthreat disposition scoring (AIRTDS) computing system, and a workflow ofthese primary operational elements, in accordance with one illustrativeembodiment. FIG. 1B is an example diagram illustrating the primaryoperational elements for runtime operation of an AIRTDS computingsystem, after training of the AIRTDS computing system, and a workflow ofthese primary operational elements, in accordance with one illustrativeembodiment. Similar reference numbers in FIGS. 1A and 1B representsimilar elements and workflow operations. FIGS. 1A and 1B assume animplementation that is directed to a security intelligence eventmonitoring (SIEM) based embodiment in which a SIEM system providessecurity alerts for classification as to whether they represent truethreats or false positives (it can be appreciated that a SIEM systemwill not generate an alert for events that do not represent potentialthreats and thus, security alerts only represent either true threats orfalse positives). However, as noted above, it should be that theillustrative embodiments are not limited to operation with SIEM systemsor security alerts and may be used with any mechanism in which eventnotifications/logged entries need to be classified into one of aplurality of classes, and which can be converted into an imagerepresentation in accordance with the mechanisms of the illustrativeembodiments.

As shown in FIG. 1A, a SIEM computing system 110, which may bepositioned in an end user computing environment 105, obtains securitylog information from managed computing resources 101 in the end usercomputing environment 105, e.g., servers, client computing devices,computing network devices, firewalls, database systems, softwareapplications executing on computing devices, and the like. Securitymonitoring engines 103 may be provided in association with these managedcomputing resources, such as agents deployed and executing on endpointcomputing devices, which collect security events and provide thesecurity event data to the SIEM computing system 110 where it is loggedin a security log data structure 112. In some illustrative embodiments,the security monitoring engine(s) 103 themselves may be considered anextension of the SIEM computing system 110 and may apply SIEM rules toperform analysis of the security events to identify event dataindicative of suspicious activity that may be indicative of a securityattack or vulnerability, triggering a security alert 120 or security logentry to be generated. Moreover, the security monitoring engine(s) mayprovide such security event log information to the SIEM system 110 forfurther evaluation. In other illustrative embodiments, the securityevent data gathered by the security monitoring engines may be providedto the SIEM system 110 for logging in a security log 112 and forgeneration of security alerts 120.

The security event data may specify various events associated with theparticular managed computing resources 101 that represent events ofinterest to security evaluations, e.g., failed login attempts, passwordchanges, network traffic patterns, system configuration changes, etc.SIEM rules are applied by the agents 103 and/or SIEM computing system110, e.g., IBM® QRadar® Security Intelligence Platform, to the securitylog information to identify potential threats to computing resources andgenerate corresponding security alerts 120. The security alerts 120 maybe logged in one or more security alert log entries or may beimmediately output to a threat monitoring interface 130 as they occur.

The threat monitoring interface 130 is a user interface that may beutilized by a security analyst to view security alerts 120 and determinethe veracity of the security alerts 120, i.e. determine whether thesecurity alerts 120 represent an actual security threat or afalse-positive generated by the SIEM rules applied by the SIEM computingsystem 110. The threat monitoring interface 130 receives security alerts120 and displays the security alert attributes to a security analyst 131via a graphical user interface so that that security analyst 131 is ableto manually view the security alert attributes, investigate the basis ofthe security alert 132, and then label the security alert 120 as beingrepresentative of an actual threat 134 to computing resources 101 of theend user computing environment 105, or a false positive alert 136. Thelabeled security alert data is then stored in an entry in the securityalert database 138 and thereby generate a training dataset comprisingsecurity alert entries and corresponding labels as to the correctclassification of the alert as to whether it represents a true threat ora false positive.

The training dataset, comprising the security alerts and theircorresponding correct classifications, are exported 142 into an alertimage encoder 144 of the AIRTDS system 140. The alert image encoder 144extracts alert attributes from the security alert entries in thetraining dataset exported from the security alert database 138 andapplies image encoding algorithms 143 to the corresponding extractedalert attributes to encode portions of an image representation of thesecurity alert. Thus, for each security alert, and for each alertattribute of each security alert, a corresponding encoded section of analert image representation is generated. Each alert attribute may have adifferent encoding performed by a different type of alert attributeimage encoding algorithm that is specific to the particular alertattribute type. Examples of the alert attribute encodings for a varietyof different alert attributes will be described hereafter with regard toexample illustrative embodiments.

The resulting encoded alert image representations 146 are input to acognitive predictive computer model 148 which is then trained based onthe encoded alert image representations 146 and the correspondingcorrect labels, i.e. “true threat” or “false positive”, associated withthe corresponding security alert entry exported 142 to the alert imageencoder 144. The cognitive predictive computer model 148 may be thealert/log entry classification machine learning mechanism previouslydescribed above which may employ a neural network model, such as aconvolutional neural network (CNN) model, that is trained through amachine learning process using the training dataset comprising the alertimage representations 146 and the corresponding ground truth of thecorrect labels generated by the security analyst 131 and stored in thesecurity alert database 138.

As mentioned previously, this machine learning may be a supervised orunsupervised machine learning operation, such as by executing the CNNmodel on the alert image representation for security alerts to therebyperform image recognition operations on image features extracted fromthe alert image representation, generating a classification of the alertas to whether it represents a true threat or a false positive, and thencomparing the result generated by the CNN model to the correctclassification for the security alert. Based on a loss functionassociated with the CNN model, a loss, or error, is calculated andoperational parameters of nodes or neurons of the CNN model are modifiedin an attempt to reduce the loss or error calculated by the lossfunction. This process may be repeated iteratively with the same ordifferent alert image representations and security alert correctclassifications. Once the loss or error is equal to or less than apredetermined threshold loss or error, the training of the CNN model isdetermined to have converged and the training process may bediscontinued. The trained CNN model, i.e. the trained alert/log entryclassification machine learning mechanism 148 may then be deployed forruntime execution on new security alerts to classify their correspondingalert image representations as to whether they represent true threats tocomputing resources or are false positives generated by the SIEM system110.

FIG. 1B illustrates an operation of the trained alert/log entryclassification machine learning mechanism 148 during runtime operationon new security alerts 150 generated by the SIEM system 110. It shouldbe noted that in the runtime operation shown in FIG. 1B, the threatmonitoring interface 130 is not necessary to the runtime operation asthe threat monitoring interface 130 was utilized to allow a securityanalyst 131 to provide a correct label for the security alerts 120 forpurposes of training. Since the training has been completed prior to theruntime operation of FIG. 1B, the new security alerts 150 may be inputdirectly into the AIRTDS system 140. That is similar to the operation ofthe SIEM system 110 during the training operation, the SIEM system 110generates new security alerts 150 which, during runtime operation, aresent directly to the AIRTDS system 140 for encoding by the alert imageencoder 144 as alert image representations 160. The alert imagerepresentations, as with the alert image representations generatedduring training, are data structures specifying image pixelcharacteristics for each pixel of a predefined size alert image andwhich encode alert attributes in predefined sections of the alert imagerepresentation. As with the training operation, the alert image encoder144 applies the encoding algorithms 143 to the extracted alertattributes from the security alert 150 and generates the alert imagerepresentation 160 that is input to the trained predictive model 148.

The trained predictive model 148 operates on the alert imagerepresentation 160 to apply the trained image recognition operations ofthe nodes/neurons of the CNN to the input alert image representationdata and generates a classification of the alert image representation160 as to whether it represents a true threat to computing resourcesdetected by the SIEM system 110, or is a false positive, i.e. an alertgenerated by the SIEM system 110, but which is not in factrepresentative of a true threat to computing resources. The outputclassification generated by the predictive model 148 may be provided toa security analyst, such as via the threat monitoring interface 130 inFIG. 1A, for further evaluation, logged in the security alert database138, or otherwise made available for further use in determining thecorrect/incorrect operation of the SIEM system 110 and performingresponsive actions to improve the operation of the SIEM system 110and/or protect the computing resources of the end user computingenvironment 105.

It should be appreciated that there are many modifications that may bemade to the example illustrative embodiments shown in FIGS. 1A and 1Bwithout departing from the spirit and scope of the illustrativeembodiments. For example, while FIGS. 1A and 1B illustrate the alertimage encoder 144 as being part of the AIRTDS system 140 in a separatecomputing environment from the end user computing environment 105, theillustrative embodiments are not limited to such. Rather, in someillustrative embodiments, the alert image encoder 144 may be deployed inthe end user computing environment 105 and may operate on securityalerts 120, 150 generated by the SIEM system 110, within the end usercomputing environment 105, as represented by the dashed line alternativeshown in FIGS. 1A and 1B. In such embodiments, rather than exporting thesecurity alerts 120, 150 to the threat monitoring interface 130 orAIRTDS system 140, instead the encoded alert image representations maybe exported. During training, the security analyst 131 may view thesecurity alerts 120, 150 using a user interface that is accessiblewithin the end user computing environment 105 and the exported alertimage representations 120 may be output along with their correspondinglabels as to whether they are true threats or false positives. Theoutputting of such alert image representations and corresponding correctlabels may be performed as a training dataset that is exported directlyto the AIRTDS system 140 for processing by the predictive model 148.

In addition, as another modification example, rather training thepredictive model 148 on both true threat and false positive alert imagerepresentations, the predictive model 148 may be trained using anunsupervised training operation on only false positive alert imagerepresentations so that the predictive model 148 learns how to recognizealert image representations that corresponding to false positives. Inthis way, the predictive model 148 regards false positives as a “normal”output and any anomalous inputs, i.e. alert image representations thatare not false positives, as true threats. Hence a single node outputlayer may be provided that indicates 1 (normal—false positive) or 0(abnormal—true threat), for example.

Other modifications may also be made to the mechanisms andtraining/runtime operation of the AIRTDS system 140 without departingfrom the spirit and scope of the illustrative embodiments. For example,various activation functions, image encoding algorithms, loss functions,and the like may be employed depending on the desired implementation.

As noted above, the alert image encoder 144 applies a variety ofdifferent image encoding algorithms to the alert attributes extractedfrom the security alerts 120, 150 generated by the SIEM system 110. Toillustrate examples of such image encoding algorithms a description ofan example SIEM system security alert 120, 150 generated by animplementation of the SIEM system 110 as the IBM® QRadar® SecurityIntelligence Platform will now be described. FIG. 2A is an examplediagram illustrating a data layout of extracted security alertattributes for a security alert that may be generated by the IBM®QRadar® Security Intelligence Platform in accordance with oneillustrative embodiment. As shown in FIG. 2A, the alert attributesinclude a remedy customer ID, an industry identifier, a QRadar rulename/Qradar rule name count/isQRalert attribute, an alert scoreQSeverity/Magnitude attribute, Event Count/Rule Fire Count attribute, aSource (Src) Geo/Src Geo count attribute, a Destination (Dst) geo/DstGeo Count attribute, Event Names/Event Names count attribute, EventVendor attribute, Event Groups/Event Groups count attribute, variousSource and Destination IP count attributes and traffic count attributes,an attack duration attribute, and an alert creation time attribute.These are only examples, other SIEM systems may generate other types ofattributes that may be the basis of the operation of the illustrativeembodiments with regard to alert image representation generation andimage analysis to identify the veracity of an alert in accordance withone or more illustrative embodiments.

The alert image encoding algorithms 143 applied by the alert imageencoder 144 are selected and configured taking into account adesirability to visually represent the alert attributes so that they arevisually easier to identify each block of alert attribute datarepresented in an image form. That is, the alert image encodingalgorithms 143 are specifically selected and configured such that theygenerate a visual pattern identifiable by the human eye as a pattern,even though the underlying meaning of the pattern is not necessarilyhuman understandable. Moreover, these algorithms 143 are selected andconfigured such that the patterns may be recognized across multiplesections of the resulting alert image representation, which comprisessections, each section corresponding to a different alert attribute, orsubset of attributes, encoded using a different alert image encodingalgorithm 143 or set of algorithms. Moreover, the alert image encodingalgorithms 143 are selected and encoded to ensure scalability bymodifying the sections (or grids) of the alert image representationattributed to the corresponding alert attribute(s), i.e. if there aremore alert attributes to consider for a particular implementation,decrease the dimensions of the section or grid and add an additionalgrid for the additional alert attributes.

Furthermore, in some illustrative embodiments, each alert attribute isafforded a fixed size section or grid in the alert image representationwhich avoids certain portions of the alert attributes having priorityover others. However, in some illustrative embodiments, the sizes of thesections or grids may be dynamically modified based on a determinedrelative priority of the corresponding alert attributes to the overallidentification of a true threat from a false positive. For example, itis determined that a particular attribute, e.g., source IP address, ismore consistently representative of an true threat/false positive thanother attributes, then the section (grid) of the alert imagerepresentation corresponding to the source IP address may have itsdimensions modified to give them greater priority in the resultsgenerated by the image recognition processing performed by the trainedpredictive model 148.

With the alert image encoding performed by the alert image encoder 144,the alert image representation is configured to a predefined image sizehaving sections, or grids, of a predetermined size. Each section or gridcorresponds to a single alert attribute encoded as an image pattern, ora subset of alert attributes that are encoded as an image patternpresent within that section or grid. In one illustrative embodiment, thealert image representation is a 90×90 pixel image having sections thatare 90×5 pixel grids.

As an example of one type of alert attribute image encoding that may beperformed by a selected and configured alert image encoding algorithm,143, the remedy customer ID may have certain bits of the customer IDselected and used to set color characteristics of pixels in acorresponding section of the alert image representation with thelocation of these pixels being dependent upon the application of a bitmask to each character of the customer ID. For example, assume a remedycustomer ID of “JPID001059.” In one illustrative embodiment, the last 6digits of the remedy customer ID, i.e. “001059,” may be extracted andtreated as a 24 bit value to set each of red, green, and blue (RGB)pixel color values. In this case, the value “001059” is treated as the24 bit value “000000000000010000100011” and each of the R, G, and Bvalues for the pixels are set to this 24 bit value. A bit mask isapplied to each characters ASCII value to decide whether or not to placethe colored pixel at a corresponding location in the correspondingsection, or grid, of the alert image representation.

As a further example, for the industry identifier and/or event vendoridentifiers, a predetermined set of characters of the string may be usedto set an initial pixel value, with the remaining characters being usedto provide a binary representation that identifies the location of wherethe colored pixels are to be placed within the section or grid, usingagain a bit mask mechanism. For example, the first 3 characters of acharacter string specifying the industry identifier or the event vendormay be used to identify the red, green, and blue pixel colorcharacteristics, e.g., Red: Char1, Green: Char2, and Blue: Char3. The4^(th) character and thereafter may be used to determine the location ofcolored pixels having these R, G, and B color characteristics. Once acharacter has been mapped to the image within the corresponding sectionor grid, that character may replace any older RGB value, e.g., any of R,G, or B values, and then a next character of the character string, e.g.,the 5^(th) character and so on, may be processed.

FIG. 2B is an example diagram illustrating the image encoding of theindustry identifier/event vendor in accordance with one illustrativeembodiment. The example shown in FIG. 2B assumes an industryidentifier/event vendor string of “a4vxb”. In this example, thecharacters “a”, “4”, and “v” are mapped to the RGB channels of the pixeland the binary representation of character “x” (e.g., 0111100001) ismapped to the image. Once “x” has been mapped to the image, “x” ismapped to the R (Red) channel, i.e. the red pixel characteristic isreset to a new value based on the “x” character, and the map nowproceeds to encoding the character “b”. This process may be repeated foreach subsequent character until the entirety of the industry identifierand/or event vendor string is encoded as an image pattern for thesection of the alert image representation.

As another encoding example, consider the QRadar Rule alert attributeinformation, which actually includes 3 attributes: QRadar Rule Name,QRadar Rule Name Count, and IsQRalert. In one illustrative embodiment ofan image encoding algorithm operating on the QRadar Rule alert attributeinformation, the IsQRalert attribute is used to determine how much ofthe corresponding section or grid to fill with colored pixels. Forexample, if the IsQRalert attribute is set to a value of “true”, thenthe full pixel grid or section is utilized. If the IsQRalert attributeis set to a value of “false,” then only a sub-portion of the section orgrid is utilized, e.g., a first half of the pixel grid is utilized.

The QRadar Rule Name Count attribute may be used to determine the pixelcolor of the pixels in the corresponding portion of the section or grid.For example, the QRadar Rule Name Count may be normalized and thenvalues may be scaled up to be in the range 0-255, for example. The pixelcolor characteristics, i.e. the RGB values, are set based on the scaledcount value, i.e. the value in the range from 0-255. For example, if thescaled count is 255, the RGB value may be set to (230, 0, 0), i.e.“red,” otherwise the RGB characteristics are set to (count, count,count) where count is the scaled count value.

The QRadar Rule Name is used to identify the pixel location, within theportion of the section or grid (determined based on the value of theIsQRalert), where the pixel, having the pixel color characteristicsdetermined based on the QRadar Rule Name Count attribute, is to beplaced. In one illustrative embodiment a special character summation isutilized where each character added to the sum is multiplied by itsindex in the string. A bit mask is then applied to the summation todetermine whether or not to place the colored pixel at the correspondinglocation.

In another example, for source/destination geographical identifierand/or source/destination geographical count, the count may be usedagain as a basis for setting the pixel color by normalizing thesource/destination geographical count and then scaling the values up tobe in the 0-255 range. The resulting scaled count values may be used toset the RGB color characteristics for the pixel, again with a count of255 being set to (230, 0, 0) while other counts are have the RGB valuesset to (count, count, count). The source/destination geographicalidentifier may be used to determine the location of the pixels withinthe corresponding section or grid by applying a bit mask to eachcharacter in the source/destination geographical identifier string todetermine whether or not to place the colored pixel at the correspondinglocation.

Similar encoding approaches may be applied to event names and eventnames count and the alert score and magnitude. For example, with regardto the event name and event names count, the event names count may againbe normalized and scaled to the 0-255 range to generate a pixel colorcharacteristic for the pixel similar to the above, and the event namemay have a bit mask applied to the event name string to determinedwhether or not to place the colored pixel at the location. The same istrue of the alert score and magnitude where the alert score andmagnitude may be normalized and scaled to the 0-255 range. The scaledalert score may be used to determine the pixel color while the scaledmagnitude may be used to determine pixel location based on a bit maskapplied to the scaled magnitude.

In another example, with regard to event and rule fire count attributes,the pixel color may be set to predetermined color characteristics, e.g.,color characteristics (RGB) corresponding to a black color. Startingwith the event count, a bit mask is applied to determine where thecolored pixels are to be located, e.g., where the black pixels are to belocated. Once the event count is bit masked, the next 8 pixels in thesection or grid may be set to a different predetermined color, e.g.,orange. Thereafter, the rule fire count may be bit masked to determinewhere colored pixels of the first predetermined color, e.g., black inthis example, are to be placed. This process may be repeated switchingbetween the event count and the rule fire count as a basis fordetermining where to locate the colored pixels until the correspondingsection or grid is filled.

FIG. 2C is an example diagram illustrating one example of this event andrule fire count attribute image encoding in accordance with oneillustrative embodiment. As shown in FIG. 2C, an event count (16 bitvalue) for an event count of 4717 (binary representation0001001001101101) and a rule fire count (16 bit value) of 39 (binaryrepresentation 0000000000100111) is utilized. The resulting imagepattern for a corresponding section or grid of the alert imagerepresentation is shown in which black and orange pixels are utilized.

In other examples, with regard to the source and destination IP countattributes, an encoding algorithm may be employed that sets pixel colorbased on the type of IP count being encoded, e.g., a differentpredetermined set of color characteristics (RGB) may be used fordifferent types of IP counts, e.g., a first color for source internal IPcount, a second color for source external IP count, a third color fordestination internal IP count, a fourth color for destination externalIP count, a fifth color for source critical IP count, a sixth color fordestination critical IP count, a seventh color for source proxy IPcount, etc. The encoding algorithm may switch between the source anddestination IP counts for a specific type, determining where to placecorresponding colored pixels in the section or grid based on a bit maskapplied to the corresponding source/destination IP count. This causes aimage pattern to be generated based on the switching between the variousIP count attributes.

In another example, using the attack duration and alert creation timeattributes, these time attributes may be treated as 24 bit values whichcan then be used to set the RGB values similar to that describedpreviously with regard to the remedy customer ID attribute. For example,if a time value is “12376”, the corresponding binary representation“000000000011000001011000” may be used to set each of the R, G, and Bvalues for the color characteristics of the pixel. A bit mask may thenbe applied to the time value to determine whether or not to place acolored pixel at a corresponding location within the section or gridassociated with the alert attribute.

Thus, various encoding algorithms may be applied to the various alertattributes to generate image patterns of pixels in the correspondingsections or pixel grids associated with those alert attributes. Thecombination of these image patterns within each section or pixel gridprovides the alert image representation for the alert as a whole, i.e.the combination of alert attributes. It should be appreciated that theabove are only examples of alert attribute image encoding algorithmsthat may be utilized to convert alert attributes to image patterns.Other image encoding algorithms that may be apparent to those ofordinary skill in the art in view of the present description may be usedwithout departing from the spirit and scope of the illustrativeembodiments.

FIG. 3A is a block diagram illustrating the operation of the alertattribute image encoding operation according to one illustrativeembodiment. As shown in FIG. 3A, each of alert attributes 312-318 of analert 310 generated by the SIEM system are encoded as pixel imagepatterns in corresponding sections 322-328 of an alert imagerepresentation 320. Again, the particular pixel colors utilized,locations of colored pixels, and the patterns of the colored pixelswithin the corresponding sections 322-328 will be dependent on theparticular alert attribute image encoding algorithm utilized, and theparticular values of the alert attributes themselves. Moreover, theparticular bit mask utilized will also determine the location of thepixels. The bit mask may be generated dynamically based on any desirablesecurity mechanism, e.g., public/private key mechanism,random/pseudo-random seed values, etc., so long as both the alert imageencoder and the predictive model mechanisms are aware of the key/valueutilized so as to be able to properly process the encoded image. Thus,if a different bit mask is utilized, different image patterns aregenerated based on the different locations of the colored pixels, makingit more difficult for a third party interloper to be able to reverseengineer the encoded alert image representation and gain access toprivate or sensitive alert attribute data

FIG. 3B is an example diagram illustrating an encoding of an alertgenerated by the IBM® QRadar® Security Intelligence Platform as an alertimage representation in accordance with one illustrative embodiment. Onthe left side of the diagram are the alert attributes of an alert 330generated by the IBM® QRadar® Security Intelligence Platform. On theright side of the diagram is an encoded alert image representation ofthe alert 340 in which sections of the alert image representationcorrespond to image patterns generated from corresponding ones of thealert attributes. As can be seen from viewing the encoded alert imagerepresentation 340 in FIG. 3B, the human eye is able to discern repeatedpatterns of pixels in sections of the alert image representation, eventhough it may not be readily discernable what these patterns mean withregard to whether a true threat is represented or a false positive.

As described previously, the predictive model 148 of the AIRTDS system140 in FIG. 1 utilizes a cognitive computing model, such as a CNN modelor other deep learning neural network model, that is trained using atraining dataset comprising alerts and corresponding ground truth labelsas to whether the alerts represent true threats or false positives.Thereafter, the trained predictive model 148 may be used to classify newalerts that are generated by a SIEM system to determine whether theyrepresent true threats or false positives and thereby direct theattention of human analysts to those alerts that are indicative of truethreats and avoid the waste of resources expended on alerts that arefalse positives.

FIG. 4 is an example diagram of a convolutional neural network modelthat may be implemented as the predictive model 148 of the AIRTDS system140 in FIG. 1 in accordance with one illustrative embodiment. The CNN400 in FIG. 4 receives, as an input, a data structure that is an encodedalert image representation of an alert generated by a SIEM system, suchas SIEM system 110 in FIG. 1. As shown in FIG. 4, the input alert imagedata structure 410 is input to a pre-processing logic stage 420 wherethe alert image data structure 410 may be pre-processed using one ormore image transformation operations to modify the received alert imagedata into a size, orientation, etc. that is more easily processed by theother layers of the CNN 400. For example, various image transformationsincluding, for example, resizing, rescaling, shearing, zooming, andflipping of the image may be performed so as to generate pre-processedalert image data that may be input to the nodes or neurons of a nextlayer 430 of the CNN 400 for processing.

In the next layer(s) 430 of the CNN 400, one or more convolutionallayers 430 are provided for performing feature detection in thepre-processed alert image data. For example, the convolutional layers430 shown in FIG. 4 may comprise 1-2 layers of nodes/neurons whichoperate on the input pre-processed alert image data to detect or extract32 different types of features. The nodes/neurons of the convolutionallayers 430 may have associated activations functions, which in thedepicted example is a Relu activation function. The result of theconvolutional layer 430 operations are provided to one or moremax-pooling layers 440 which pools the outputs of the convolutionallayers 430 into a smaller set of features, e.g., a max-pooling layerthat uses the maximum value from each of a cluster of neurons or nodesat the prior layer.

The CNN 400 further includes a flattening layer 450 that converts theresultant arrays generated by the max-pooling layers 440 into a singlelong continuous linear vector. One or more fully connected dense hiddenlayers 460 are then provided which learn non-linear functions ofcombinations of the extracted features (now flattened into a vectorrepresentation by the flattening layer 450). The fully connectedlayer(s) 460 nodes/neurons again may utilize a Relu activation functionand may have operational parameters, such as weights and the like, thatare learned through a machine learning process. The weightedcombinations of outputs from the fully connected layer(s) 460 may beprovided to an output layer 470 which generates an output classificationof the original input encoded alert image representation data structure410.

In the depicted example, the output layer 470 comprises a singlenode/neuron which uses a sigmoid activation function and outputs abinary output indicating whether the input alert image represents ananomaly or not. Again, a normal output is indicative of a false positivewhereas an anomaly is indicative of a true threat. Thus, if the outputlayer 470 neuron outputs an anomaly, then the input alert imagerepresents a true threat and is not a false positive. If the outputlayer 470 neuron outputs a normal classification output, then the inputalert image represents a false positive. This is because in the depictedexample, the CNN 400 is trained using only false positive training dataas part of an unsupervised machine learning process.

It should be appreciated that based on the output of the CNN 400, thepredictive model 148 of the AIRTDS system 140 may indicate whether ornot the received alert 150 represents an actual true threat to computingresources in the computing environment 105, or is a false positivegenerated by the monitoring computing system. Using the example of aSIEM computing tool, the predictive model 148 indicates whether or notthe security alert generated by SIEM rules executed by the SIEMcomputing system 110 represent actual attacks or threats on thecomputing resources 101 or are false positives. The output of thepredictive model 148 may be provided to the threat monitoring interface130 or other user interface, logged in a security alert log or database,such as database 138, or otherwise made available for further review andprocessing. For example, in the case of a SIEM system, the results ofthe processing by the predictive model 148 may be provided to a securityanalyst 131 so that they are informed of which security alerts 150warrant additional attention by their human efforts and which securityalerts 150 are false alarms or false positives and should not be thefocus of additional human efforts.

While the above illustrative embodiments are described in terms ofalerts generated by a SIEM system, the illustrative embodiments are notlimited to such alerts and instead may be applied to any structurednotification or log entry in which attributes of the underlying eventsoccurring within the monitored computing environment are recorded forfurther processing. The illustrative embodiments encode the attributesas portions of an image which can then be processed by image recognitionmechanisms in a cognitive computing manner to evaluate whether or notthe attributes represent a particular class of event, e.g., a truethreat or a false-positive in the case of a SIEM computing systemimplementation. Whether these attributes are provided as alertnotifications, log entries in a log data structure, or any other datastructure or notification message, the mechanisms of the illustrativeembodiments are applicable to such data structures.

Also, while the illustrative embodiments are described in the context ofa SIEM system and alerts concerning potential security threats tocomputing resources, the illustrative embodiments are not limited tosuch and any computing resource monitoring mechanism that generatesalerts and/or log entries for events occurring within a computingenvironment may make use of the mechanisms of the illustrativeembodiments. That is, the illustrative embodiments take the alertsgenerated by a monitoring computing system and convert them to imagerepresentations which can then be classified using cognitive imagerecognition computing models. Thus, the mechanisms of the illustrativeembodiments are applicable to a plethora of implementations involvingalerts/log entries that may be represented as encoded images and towhich image recognition mechanisms may be applied in the mannerdescribed above.

FIGS. 5A and 5B illustrate flowcharts outlining an example operation ofa AIRTDS system during training (FIG. 5A) and runtime operation (FIG.5B), in accordance with one illustrative embodiment. As shown in FIG.5A, the training operation for training the AIRTDS system starts byreceiving a plurality of security alerts generated by a SIEM systemmonitoring security events occurring with regard to one or morecomputing resources of a monitored computing environment (step 510). Thesecurity alerts are submitted to a threat monitoring interface forpresentation to a security analyst (step 512). The security analyst addsa classification label to the security alert indicating whether or notthe security alert is associated with a true threat to security ofcomputing resources in the monitored computing environment, or is afalse positive generated by the SIEM system (step 514). The alert andits corresponding label are stored in a security alert database for useas part of a training dataset (step 516).

The training dataset is exported to the AIRTDS system for training apredictive computing model of the AIRTDS system (step 518). Eachsecurity alert in the training dataset is converted by the alert imageencoder of the AIRTDS system into an alert image representation using aplurality of alert attribute image encoding algorithms that convertcorresponding alert attributes to image patterns in predefined sectionsor grids of the alert image representation (step 520). The combinationof the image patterns generated in the various sections or grids areprovided as an alert image representation data structure that is inputas training data into a neural network model, e.g., CNN, operating asthe predictive model of the AIRTDS system (step 522). The neural networkmodel processes the alert image representations of the security alertsand applies image recognition logic to extract features of the alertimage representation and evaluate them (step 524) to generate aprediction of a classification of the security alert as to whether ornot it represents a true threat or a false positive (step 526). Inaddition, the correct label for the corresponding security alert isprovided to training logic associated with the neural network model soas to compare the correct label for the security alert to the outputgenerated by the neural network model to determine a loss or error inthe operation of the neural network model (step 528).

Based on the determined loss or error, the training logic adjustsoperational parameters of the neural network model to reduce the loss orerror in the neural network model output (step 530). This operation isrepeated in an iterative manner until the loss or error is equal to orless than a predetermined threshold (step 532). The trained predictivemodel being deployed for runtime processing of new security alerts (step534). The operation then terminates.

With reference now to FIG. 5B, during runtime operation, a new securityalert is generated by the SIEM system (step 540) and input to an alertimage encoder of the AIRTDS system (step 542). The alert image encoderof the AIRTDS system converts the security alert into an alert imagerepresentation using a plurality of alert attribute image encodingalgorithms that convert corresponding alert attributes to image patternsin predefined sections or grids of the alert image representation (step544). The combination of the image patterns generated in the varioussections or grids are provided as an alert image representation datastructure that is input to the trained neural network predictive modelof the AIRTDS system (step 546). The neural network predictive modelprocesses the alert image representation and applies image recognitionlogic to extract features of the alert image representation and evaluatethem (step 548) to generate a prediction of a classification of thesecurity alert as to whether or not it represents a true threat or afalse positive (step 550). The prediction output is then provided to asecurity analyst, logged in a security alert database, and/or otherwisemade available for further processing or evaluation by security analyststo handle security alerts that represent true security threats and avoidwasted resource expenditures on security alerts that are likely falsepositives (step 552). The operation then terminates.

It is apparent from the above description that the illustrativeembodiments may be utilized in many different types of data processingenvironments. In order to provide a context for the description of thespecific elements and functionality of the illustrative embodiments,FIGS. 6 and 7 are provided hereafter as example environments in whichaspects of the illustrative embodiments may be implemented. It should beappreciated that FIGS. 6 and 7 are only examples and are not intended toassert or imply any limitation with regard to the environments in whichaspects or embodiments of the present invention may be implemented. Manymodifications to the depicted environments may be made without departingfrom the spirit and scope of the present invention.

FIG. 6 depicts a pictorial representation of an example distributed dataprocessing system in which aspects of the illustrative embodiments maybe implemented. Distributed data processing system 600 may include anetwork of computers in which aspects of the illustrative embodimentsmay be implemented. The distributed data processing system 600 containsat least one network 602, which is the medium used to providecommunication links between various devices and computers connectedtogether within distributed data processing system 600. The network 602may include connections, such as wire, wireless communication links, orfiber optic cables.

In the depicted example, servers 604A-C and server 606 are connected tonetwork 602 along with storage units 608. In addition, clients 610, 612,and 614 are also connected to network 602. These clients 610, 612, and614 may be, for example, personal computers, network computers, or thelike. In the depicted example, server 604 provides data accessible bythe clients 610, 612, and 614 in order to render content on the clients610-614 via one or more applications, an operating system, and the like,executing on the clients 610-614. Distributed data processing system 600may include additional servers, clients, and other devices not shown,e.g., network routing or switching equipment, storage devices, and thelike.

In the depicted example, distributed data processing system 600 is theInternet with network 602 representing a worldwide collection ofnetworks and gateways that use the Transmission ControlProtocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite of protocols to communicatewith one another. At the heart of the Internet is a backbone ofhigh-speed data communication lines between major nodes or hostcomputers, consisting of thousands of commercial, governmental,educational and other computer systems that route data and messages. Ofcourse, the distributed data processing system 600 may also beimplemented to include a number of different types of networks, such asfor example, an intranet, a local area network (LAN), a wide areanetwork (WAN), or the like. As stated above, FIG. 6 is intended as anexample, not as an architectural limitation for different embodiments ofthe present invention, and therefore, the particular elements shown inFIG. 6 should not be considered limiting with regard to the environmentsin which the illustrative embodiments of the present invention may beimplemented.

As shown in FIG. 6, one or more of the computing devices, e.g., one ormore of the servers 604A-604C, may be specifically configured toimplement a SIEM system 620 in combination with one or more computingresources of a monitored computing environment 640, which may includeone or more of the client computing devices 610-614, network appliances,storage devices, and the like, which may execute applications and thelike, all of which may be considered computing resources, eitherphysical or virtual in nature. In addition, one or more servers may beconfigured to implement an AIRTDS system 630 in accordance with one ormore of the illustrative embodiments. The configuring of the computingdevice may comprise the providing of application specific hardware,firmware, or the like to facilitate the performance of the operationsand generation of the outputs described herein with regard to theillustrative embodiments. The configuring of the computing device mayalso, or alternatively, comprise the providing of software applicationsstored in one or more storage devices and loaded into memory of acomputing device, such as server 604A-604C and/or 606, for causing oneor more hardware processors of the computing device to execute thesoftware applications that configure the processors to perform theoperations and generate the outputs described herein with regard to theillustrative embodiments. Moreover, any combination of applicationspecific hardware, firmware, software applications executed on hardware,or the like, may be used without departing from the spirit and scope ofthe illustrative embodiments.

It should be appreciated that once the computing device is configured inone of these ways, the computing device becomes a specialized computingdevice specifically configured to implement the mechanisms of theillustrative embodiments and is not a general purpose computing device.Moreover, the implementation of the mechanisms of the illustrativeembodiments improves the functionality of the computing device andprovides a useful and concrete result that facilitates security alertimage encoding and corresponding cognitive computing image recognitionoperations for predicting whether a security alert image representationrepresents a true threat or a false positive.

As shown in FIG. 6, one or more of the client devices 610-614 may beassociated with the monitored computing environment 640 and mayrepresent computing resources of the monitored computing environment640. One or more computing devices of the monitored computingenvironment 640, e.g., one of the client devices 610-614, a server (notshown), or the like, may execute a security monitoring engine 642 whichapplies SIEM rules to security events occurring with regard to thecomputing resources of the monitored computing environment to determineif the security events potentially represent attacks/threats and if so,generates a security alert for further investigation by a securityanalyst. As mentioned above, known SIEM systems may generate many falsepositive alerts.

With the mechanisms of the illustrative embodiments, the security alertsgenerated by the SIEM system based on the application of the SIEM rulesare further analyzed by the AIRTDS system 630, comprising the securityalert image encoder 632 and the trained cognitive computing predictivemodel 634, to determine whether the security alert represents a truethreat or is instead likely a false positive. As described previously,the security alert image encoder 632 applies a plurality of securityalert attribute image encoding algorithms to the security alertattributes to convert them into image patterns comprising patterns ofpixels in predefined sections or grids of an overall security alertimage representation of the security alert. The security alert imagerepresentation is then input to the trained cognitive computingpredictive model 634 for evaluation and classification as to whether ornot the security alert represents an actual or true threat or is a falsepositive.

The classification output generated by the predictive model 634 may bereturned to a security analyst associated with the SIEM system of themonitored environment 640 for presentation to the security analyst sothat they are made aware of which security alerts warrant additionalinvestigation and expenditure of resources to address potential securitythreats. The prediction outputs generated by the predictive model 634may be output to the security analyst via a threat monitoring interfaceof the SIEM system, for example.

As noted above, the mechanisms of the illustrative embodiments utilizespecifically configured computing devices, or data processing systems,to perform the operations of the AIRTDS system. These computing devices,or data processing systems, may comprise various hardware elements whichare specifically configured, either through hardware configuration,software configuration, or a combination of hardware and softwareconfiguration, to implement one or more of the systems/subsystemsdescribed herein. FIG. 7 is a block diagram of just one example dataprocessing system in which aspects of the illustrative embodiments maybe implemented. Data processing system 700 is an example of a computer,such as server 604 in FIG. 6, in which computer usable code orinstructions implementing the processes and aspects of the illustrativeembodiments of the present invention may be located and/or executed soas to achieve the operation, output, and external effects of theillustrative embodiments as described herein.

In the depicted example, data processing system 700 employs a hubarchitecture including north bridge and memory controller hub (NB/MCH)702 and south bridge and input/output (I/O) controller hub (SB/ICH) 704.Processing unit 706, main memory 708, and graphics processor 710 areconnected to NB/MCH 702. Graphics processor 710 may be connected toNB/MCH 702 through an accelerated graphics port (AGP).

In the depicted example, local area network (LAN) adapter 712 connectsto SB/ICH 704. Audio adapter 716, keyboard and mouse adapter 720, modem722, read only memory (ROM) 724, hard disk drive (HDD) 726, CD-ROM drive730, universal serial bus (USB) ports and other communication ports 732,and PCI/PCIe devices 734 connect to SB/ICH 704 through bus 738 and bus740. PCI/PCIe devices may include, for example, Ethernet adapters,add-in cards, and PC cards for notebook computers. PCI uses a card buscontroller, while PCIe does not. ROM 724 may be, for example, a flashbasic input/output system (BIOS).

HDD 726 and CD-ROM drive 730 connect to SB/ICH 704 through bus 740. HDD726 and CD-ROM drive 730 may use, for example, an integrated driveelectronics (IDE) or serial advanced technology attachment (SATA)interface. Super I/O (SIO) device 736 may be connected to SB/ICH 704.

An operating system runs on processing unit 706. The operating systemcoordinates and provides control of various components within the dataprocessing system 700 in FIG. 7. As a client, the operating system maybe a commercially available operating system such as Microsoft®Windows10®. An object-oriented programming system, such as the Java™programming system, may run in conjunction with the operating system andprovides calls to the operating system from Java™ programs orapplications executing on data processing system 700.

As a server, data processing system 700 may be, for example, an IBMeServer™ System P® computer system, Power™ processor based computersystem, or the like, running the Advanced Interactive Executive (AIX®)operating system or the LINUX® operating system. Data processing system700 may be a symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) system including a pluralityof processors in processing unit 706. Alternatively, a single processorsystem may be employed.

Instructions for the operating system, the object-oriented programmingsystem, and applications or programs are located on storage devices,such as HDD 726, and may be loaded into main memory 708 for execution byprocessing unit 706. The processes for illustrative embodiments of thepresent invention may be performed by processing unit 706 using computerusable program code, which may be located in a memory such as, forexample, main memory 708, ROM 724, or in one or more peripheral devices726 and 730, for example.

A bus system, such as bus 738 or bus 740 as shown in FIG. 7, may becomprised of one or more buses. Of course, the bus system may beimplemented using any type of communication fabric or architecture thatprovides for a transfer of data between different components or devicesattached to the fabric or architecture. A communication unit, such asmodem 722 or network adapter 712 of FIG. 7, may include one or moredevices used to transmit and receive data. A memory may be, for example,main memory 708, ROM 724, or a cache such as found in NB/MCH 702 in FIG.7.

As mentioned above, in some illustrative embodiments the mechanisms ofthe illustrative embodiments may be implemented as application specifichardware, firmware, or the like, application software stored in astorage device, such as HDD 726 and loaded into memory, such as mainmemory 708, for executed by one or more hardware processors, such asprocessing unit 706, or the like. As such, the computing device shown inFIG. 7 becomes specifically configured to implement the mechanisms ofthe illustrative embodiments and specifically configured to perform theoperations and generate the outputs described herein with regard to theSIEM rules management system.

Those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the hardware inFIGS. 6 and 7 may vary depending on the implementation. Other internalhardware or peripheral devices, such as flash memory, equivalentnon-volatile memory, or optical disk drives and the like, may be used inaddition to or in place of the hardware depicted in FIGS. 6 and 7. Also,the processes of the illustrative embodiments may be applied to amultiprocessor data processing system, other than the SMP systemmentioned previously, without departing from the spirit and scope of thepresent invention.

Moreover, the data processing system 700 may take the form of any of anumber of different data processing systems including client computingdevices, server computing devices, a tablet computer, laptop computer,telephone or other communication device, a personal digital assistant(PDA), or the like. In some illustrative examples, data processingsystem 700 may be a portable computing device that is configured withflash memory to provide non-volatile memory for storing operating systemfiles and/or user-generated data, for example. Essentially, dataprocessing system 700 may be any known or later developed dataprocessing system without architectural limitation.

As noted above, it should be appreciated that the illustrativeembodiments may take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, anentirely software embodiment or an embodiment containing both hardwareand software elements. In one example embodiment, the mechanisms of theillustrative embodiments are implemented in software or program code,which includes but is not limited to firmware, resident software,microcode, etc.

A data processing system suitable for storing and/or executing programcode will include at least one processor coupled directly or indirectlyto memory elements through a communication bus, such as a system bus,for example. The memory elements can include local memory employedduring actual execution of the program code, bulk storage, and cachememories which provide temporary storage of at least some program codein order to reduce the number of times code must be retrieved from bulkstorage during execution. The memory may be of various types including,but not limited to, ROM, PROM, EPROM, EEPROM, DRAM, SRAM, Flash memory,solid state memory, and the like.

Input/output or I/O devices (including but not limited to keyboards,displays, pointing devices, etc.) can be coupled to the system eitherdirectly or through intervening wired or wireless I/O interfaces and/orcontrollers, or the like. I/O devices may take many different formsother than conventional keyboards, displays, pointing devices, and thelike, such as for example communication devices coupled through wired orwireless connections including, but not limited to, smart phones, tabletcomputers, touch screen devices, voice recognition devices, and thelike. Any known or later developed I/O device is intended to be withinthe scope of the illustrative embodiments.

Network adapters may also be coupled to the system to enable the dataprocessing system to become coupled to other data processing systems orremote printers or storage devices through intervening private or publicnetworks. Modems, cable modems and Ethernet cards are just a few of thecurrently available types of network adapters for wired communications.Wireless communication based network adapters may also be utilizedincluding, but not limited to, 802.11 a/b/g/n wireless communicationadapters, Bluetooth wireless adapters, and the like. Any known or laterdeveloped network adapters are intended to be within the spirit andscope of the present invention.

The description of the present invention has been presented for purposesof illustration and description, and is not intended to be exhaustive orlimited to the invention in the form disclosed. Many modifications andvariations will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the artwithout departing from the scope and spirit of the describedembodiments. The embodiment was chosen and described in order to bestexplain the principles of the invention, the practical application, andto enable others of ordinary skill in the art to understand theinvention for various embodiments with various modifications as aresuited to the particular use contemplated. The terminology used hereinwas chosen to best explain the principles of the embodiments, thepractical application or technical improvement over technologies foundin the marketplace, or to enable others of ordinary skill in the art tounderstand the embodiments disclosed herein.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method, in a data processing system comprisingat least one processor and at least one memory, wherein the at least onememory comprises instructions which are executed by the at least oneprocessor and specifically configure the at least one processor toimplement an image based event classification engine comprising an eventimage encoder and a first neural network computer model, wherein themethod comprises: receiving, by the event image encoder, an event datastructure comprising a plurality of event attributes, wherein the eventdata structure represents an event occurring in association with atleast one computing resource in a monitored computing environment;executing, by the event image encoder, for each event attribute in theplurality of event attributes, a corresponding event attribute encoderthat encodes the event attribute as a pixel pattern in a predeterminedgrid of pixels, corresponding to the event attribute, of an event imagerepresentation data structure; inputting, into the first neural networkcomputer model, the event image representation data structure;processing, by the first neural network computer model, the event imagerepresentation data structure by applying one or more image featureextraction operations and image feature analysis algorithms to the eventimage representation data structure to generate a classificationprediction output classifying the event into one of a plurality ofpredefined classifications; and outputting, by the first neural networkcomputer model, a classification output indicating a prediction of oneof the predefined classifications that applies to the event.
 2. Themethod of claim 1, wherein the computing environment monitoring systemis a security intelligence event monitoring system and wherein the eventis an alert notification generated by the security intelligence eventmonitoring system.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein the event attributeencoder comprises one or more trained second neural network computermodels trained to encode one or more of the event attributes in theplurality of event attributes into a corresponding pixel pattern in acorresponding predetermined grid of pixels.
 4. The method of claim 1,wherein the first neural network computer model is trained via anunsupervised machine learning process to detect anomalies within theevent image representation data structure.
 5. The method of claim 1,wherein the event image encoder is deployed in an end user computingdevice of the monitored computing environment and the first neuralnetwork computer model is deployed in a server computing device outsidethe monitored computing environment, and wherein inputting the eventimage representation comprises transmitting the event imagerepresentation outside the monitored computing environment to the servercomputing device without outputting the event data structure outside themonitored computing environment.
 6. The method of claim 1, wherein theevent attributes comprise at least one of a customer identifier, asource address, a destination address, an event name, a triggering ruleidentification, or a duration, and wherein different event attributeencoders are executed on different types of event attributes.
 7. Themethod of claim 1, wherein the plurality of predefined classificationscomprise a true-threat classification indicating the event to representan attack on the at least one computing resource, and a false-positiveclassification indicating that the event represents a falsely identifiedattack on the at least one computing resource.
 8. The method of claim 1,wherein executing, for each event attribute in the plurality of eventattributes, a corresponding event attribute encoder further comprises,for the event attribute: selecting a set of bits of the event attribute;converting the set of bits to a corresponding set of color propertiesfor pixels in a corresponding pixel pattern; and applying a bitmask tobits of the event attribute to determine a location within acorresponding predetermined grid of pixels to place the pixels togenerate a corresponding pixel pattern.
 9. The method of claim 1,wherein the event image representation comprises a visual patterndiscernable by the human eye but whose underlying meaning is not readilyapparent to a human being without the processing, by the first neuralnetwork computing model, of the event image representation datastructure to classify the event into one of the plurality of predefinedclassifications.
 10. The method of claim 1, wherein the first neuralnetwork computing model comprises a pre-processing layer to performimage transformation operations to generate a pre-processed image, afeature detection layer that applies the one or more image featureextraction operations to detect and extract a set of features from thepre-processed image, a pooling layer which pools outputs of the featuredetection layer into a smaller set of one or more feature arrays, aflattening layer that converts the one or more feature arrays generatedby the pooling layer into a linear vector, one or more fully connectedhidden layers which have trained non-linear functions of combinations ofthe features represented by the linear vector, and an output layer whichoutputs the classification output based on the outputs of the one ormore fully connected hidden layers.
 11. A computer program productcomprising a computer readable storage medium having a computer readableprogram stored therein, wherein the computer readable program, whenexecuted on a computing device, causes the computing device to implementan image based event classification engine comprising an event imageencoder and a first neural network computer model, that operates to:receive, by the event image encoder, an event data structure comprisinga plurality of event attributes, wherein the event data structurerepresents an event occurring in association with at least one computingresource in a monitored computing environment; execute, by the eventimage encoder, for each event attribute in the plurality of eventattributes, a corresponding event attribute encoder that encodes theevent attribute as a pixel pattern in a predetermined grid of pixels,corresponding to the event attribute, of an event image representationdata structure; input, into the first neural network computer model, theevent image representation data structure; process, by the first neuralnetwork computer model, the event image representation data structure byapplying one or more image feature extraction operations and imagefeature analysis algorithms to the event image representation datastructure to generate a classification prediction output classifying theevent into one of a plurality of predefined classifications; and output,by the first neural network computer model, a classification outputindicating a prediction of one of the predefined classifications thatapplies to the event.
 12. The computer program product of claim 11,wherein the computing environment monitoring system is a securityintelligence event monitoring system and wherein the event is an alertnotification generated by the security intelligence event monitoringsystem.
 13. The computer program product of claim 11, wherein the eventattribute encoder comprises one or more trained second neural networkcomputer models trained to encode one or more of the event attributes inthe plurality of event attributes into a corresponding pixel pattern ina corresponding predetermined grid of pixels.
 14. The computer programproduct of claim 11, wherein the first neural network computer model istrained via an unsupervised machine learning process to detect anomalieswithin the event image representation data structure.
 15. The computerprogram product of claim 11, wherein the event image encoder is deployedin an end user computing device of the monitored computing environmentand the first neural network computer model is deployed in a servercomputing device outside the monitored computing environment, andwherein inputting the event image representation comprises transmittingthe event image representation outside the monitored computingenvironment to the server computing device without outputting the eventdata structure outside the monitored computing environment.
 16. Thecomputer program product of claim 11, wherein the event attributescomprise at least one of a customer identifier, a source address, adestination address, an event name, a triggering rule identification, ora duration, and wherein different event attribute encoders are executedon different types of event attributes.
 17. The computer program productof claim 11, wherein the plurality of predefined classificationscomprise a true-threat classification indicating the event to representan attack on the at least one computing resource, and a false-positiveclassification indicating that the event represents a falsely identifiedattack on the at least one computing resource.
 18. The computer programproduct of claim 11, wherein the computer readable program furthercauses the computing device to execute, for each event attribute in theplurality of event attributes, a corresponding event attribute encoderat least by, for the event attribute: selecting a set of bits of theevent attribute; converting the set of bits to a corresponding set ofcolor properties for pixels in a corresponding pixel pattern; andapplying a bitmask to bits of the event attribute to determine alocation within a corresponding predetermined grid of pixels to placethe pixels to generate a corresponding pixel pattern.
 19. The computerprogram product of claim 11, wherein the event image representationcomprises a visual pattern discernable by the human eye but whoseunderlying meaning is not readily apparent to a human being without theprocessing, by the first neural network computing model, of the eventimage representation data structure to classify the event into one ofthe plurality of predefined classifications.
 20. An apparatuscomprising: a processor; and a memory coupled to the processor, whereinthe memory comprises instructions which, when executed by the processor,cause the processor to implement an image based event classificationengine comprising an event image encoder and a first neural networkcomputer model, that operates to: receive, by the event image encoder,an event data structure comprising a plurality of event attributes,wherein the event data structure represents an event occurring inassociation with at least one computing resource in a monitoredcomputing environment; execute, by the event image encoder, for eachevent attribute in the plurality of event attributes, a correspondingevent attribute encoder that encodes the event attribute as a pixelpattern in a predetermined grid of pixels, corresponding to the eventattribute, of an event image representation data structure; input, intothe first neural network computer model, the event image representationdata structure; process, by the first neural network computer model, theevent image representation data structure by applying one or more imagefeature extraction operations and image feature analysis algorithms tothe event image representation data structure to generate aclassification prediction output classifying the event into one of aplurality of predefined classifications; and output, by the first neuralnetwork computer model, a classification output indicating a predictionof one of the predefined classifications that applies to the event.